Homelessness
An illustration with 25 panels depicting calendar pages alternating with experiences of people living in homelessness or temporary shelter while waiting to be assigned to permanent housing.

In San Francisco, Hundreds of Homes for the Homeless Sit Vacant

02.24.2022
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As of early February, the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing reported 1,633 homeless people approved for housing and awaiting their turn to move in. Yet records provided by the department show 888 vacancies in its permanent supportive housing stock as of Feb. 22. Filling those empty rooms would not just cut the waiting list by more than half. It would be enough to house roughly one in every eight homeless people in the city. The homelessness department said it cannot talk about individual cases, but officials acknowledged that at least 400 people have been waiting more than a year, far beyond the department’s professed goal of placing applicants into housing 30 to 45 days after they’re approved.

City Hall
candidates in February 2022 San Francisco election

School Board Members Recalled in Special Election, Assembly Race Heads to Runoff

02.16.2022
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An overwhelming percentage of San Francisco voters decided to expel three San Francisco Unified School District board commissioners in the city’s first recall vote in nearly 40 years. Preliminary results for the Feb. 15 special election show that more than 70% of voters cast ballots to oust school board President Gabriela López and members Alison Collins and Faauuga Moliga.

City Hall
A birds-eye view of several multi-story apartment buildings, with downtown San Francisco in the background.

SF Tenants Set to Gain New Powers in Negotiations With Landlords

02.16.2022
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Tenants across San Francisco will gain new collective bargaining powers to affect conditions in their buildings, thanks to a move by lawmakers Tuesday.

The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved protections for tenants to form associations, akin to labor unions, that can negotiate with landlords over a wide range of concerns, including issues like construction schedules and even helping tenants pay off debts taken on to cover rents, often called “shadow debt.”

Housing
Coit Tower and the San Francisco Bay are seen behind apartment buildings in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood.

SF Renters on Verge of Winning Collective Bargaining Rights

02.07.2022
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Groundbreaking tenant protections just got closer to becoming a reality in San Francisco.

City supervisors Monday gave the initial thumbs-up to legislation to protect the formation of tenant associations that, like unions, could collectively bargain with landlords. The three-person Rules Committee voted unanimously to approve the protections, which now move to the full Board of Supervisors.

Housing

Seeing Signs of Speculation, SF Allocates Millions to Buy Housing

12.09.2021
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Tenants, advocates and city legislators are worried about real estate investors buying multi-unit housing properties like this one only to evict all of the tenants and sell the buildings for a profit. They want the city and the nonprofits it works with to buy those buildings instead of leaving them for speculators to snap up.

Housing
An aerial shot of 2-4 story apartment buildings in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood.

SF Unequally Distributed Affordable Housing, Audit Finds

07.02.2021
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San Francisco has not prioritized neighborhoods with little recently built affordable housing when deciding which projects to fund, a public audit released this week found.

About 90% of affordable housing added in the last decade has gone to just four eastern and central neighborhoods.

Housing
A view of San Francisco's Russian Hill neighborhood, set against a yellow sunset.

SF Has Not Made a Single Payment From Federal Rent-Relief Program as Eviction Moratorium Poised to End

06.23.2021
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With time running out, not a single San Francisco resident has received a check from the city’s federally funded rent-relief program. Barely a week remains before landlords can resume evictions for unpaid rents due during the pandemic.

“I have never been evicted or homeless,” said Buddy Bates, a renter in Parkmerced and father of two. “I live in that fear constantly now.”

Utilities
Joe Eskenazi, managing editor at Mission Local

Journalist Uncovers Potential Fire Danger in Earthquake Safety Retrofits

05.05.2021
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In an effort to keep certain buildings from collapsing during an earthquake, thousands have received city-mandated seismic retrofits. But as Joe Eskenazi, managing editor at Mission Local, revealed in a recent special report, some of these upgrades left gas lines encased in concrete, which raises concerns about post-quake fires or explosions. 

“The real problem is if it breaks and the gas leaks out inside the building, where it’s leaking out quote-unquote under slab,” meaning under the concrete foundation. “Then all you need is some manner of spark, and then you have an explosion,” Eskenazi told “Civic.” 

It’s unclear how many of the 4,000 retrofits completed in the city have potentially problematic encased gas lines, which makes it difficult to measure exactly how catastrophic the aftermath of an earthquake could be. “If even just a small percentage of the retrofits have a problem like this in an earthquake situation, that could be a significant number of fire risks throughout the city,” Eskenazi said. “Even a small portion of these having this risk could lead to a terrible situation following an earthquake, because all the emergency services are going to have enough to do after an earthquake.”

In a second special report, he surfaced complaints that engineers have been making for years about shoddy construction work on such retrofits, which they allege were brushed off by the building inspection department.

Housing
Protesters hold a sign listing demands, in English and Spanish, regarding San Francisco's rent assistance program.

Nonprofit Obstructing Rent Aid for Thousands of San Franciscans

04.23.2021
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A local group that worked with San Francisco on a public program to allocate rental relief funds is keeping a list of thousands of applicants from city staff, an official confirmed Friday. That has made it impossible to follow up with the applicants and give them additional help.

Q Foundation created the web application tool for rent assistance through San Francisco’s Give2SF COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund.